Audio of Trump Bragging About Groping Women May Be the Final Straw

New video footage obtained by The Washington Post depicts Donald Trump using extremely vulgar language to describe a married woman he claims he attempted to seduce, and how he enjoyed groping women: “Grab them by the p----, you can do anything.”

The raw footage was shot by Access Hollywood in September of 2005, and followed Trump as he was taping a promo for his cameo on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. Trump, on the Access Hollywood bus with host Billy Bush, was fully mic’d up when he was recorded discussing a failed attempt to seduce an unnamed woman.

“I did try and f--- her. She was married,” says Trump, who had married his third wife, Melania Trump, less than a year before the video was recorded. “And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” he continues, as a man laughs in the background. “Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

Trump notices Arianne Zucker, then an actress on Days of Our Lives, waiting for their bus to arrive. “I’ve gotta use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her,” Trump says. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.

“And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump continues. “Grab them by the p----. You can do anything.”

With some 30 days left until the election, this recording likely will not help Trump’s standing among women voters, many of whom are already nauseated by his biography: Trump has been repeatedly accused of sexism and vulgar behavior throughout the three-plus decades of his public life, from accusations of rape and harassment from his ex-wife Ivana (who later rescinded the claim), to the newly resurfaced reports of his treatment of former beauty queen Alicia Machado. It may also negatively impact his standing among religious groups, such as Christian evangelicals. Though, frankly, it should turn off any sentient person with the stomach to watch it—many of them, one thinks, members of the Republican Party who can only wonder how the orator of such heinous commentary has become their standard-bearer.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Trump called the comments “locker-room banter” and brushed off his remarks as “a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”